


Thorough Background Check

by matrixrefugee



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 10:41:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17958956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matrixrefugee/pseuds/matrixrefugee
Summary: Finch narrows down the possibilities he has to assist him in helping the Numbers...





	Thorough Background Check

**Author's Note:**

> Written for < lj user="tamingthemuse">'s Prompt #374 -Before the War. Pre-canon, or during the same time frame as the flashbacks in 1x21 "Many Happy Returns"

He ran these qualifiers past the Machine, searching for any retired agents, younger than fifty but older than thirty, still vigorous, but with the kind of wisdom that comes from experience in the field.

One name kept coming up, one John Reese, a former CIA operative working overseas who had gone rogue, apparently after trying to assassinate his partner, though there was evidence that said partner had survived and gone into the wind as well. Finch traced the man's identifying information to a set of military records, though the man went by a different name there: tours of duty in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea, returning to the States briefly over the years.

But this man had had his times of peace: Finch managed to trace "Reese"'s life to these times, to the town where he had grown up, in Washington, to his family of origin: he had been the eldest of several children in a family of Irish and French extraction. Baptismal and First Communion records showed his mother had raised the children Catholic, though at some point, she separated from her husband, apparently after one too many quarrels that had turned physical. School records showed Reese had had to drop out to help provide for the family, working a series of jobs for various businesses in the small town: as a box boy in a grocery store, a truck driver for a lumber yard as soon as he was old enough to get his license, finally he went into the military for the benefits, but it seemed to have become a career. Before that, he had been a slightly spotty student, reasonably good in his classes, but not remarkable, a student that applied himself to his studies but was not precisely an intellectual. He had a record of getting into fights, but notes made by the principal -- clearly a reasonable person who listened to more than one side of the story -- showed he tended to get into them to defend weaker students. He was a fighter even back then, but an honorable one, and given his record in combat, he had retained that sense of honor: his military record showed he would not tolerate trophy takers in his squad, nor would he allow his comrades to misuse prisoners of war.

And it would seem he had had other paths he might have chosen. Finch found, on the update history of a social networking page belonging to a woman named Jessica Arndt, several pictures of Reese with her. Later, several months after 9-11, she had deleted them, once she had changed her status, reflecting a gradual change in the relationship. But she had clearly been close with Reese, a connection that had unraveled only due to the war and Reese's remobilization.

He had the qualities Finch needed in an assistant, in a field operative, as it were, and if the Machine kept flagging him as a strong possibility, he had to be the one to fill the position, to one to help him carry on what Nathan had started, giving the Machine a purpose beyond a high tech watchdog.


End file.
